This dissertation has been 64—3183 microfilmed exactly as received MURPHY, John Leo, 1923- SOME PROBLEMS IN THE ANONYMOUS DRAMA OF THE ELIZABETHAN STAGE. The University of Oklahoma, Ph.D., 1963 Language and Literature, modern University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan THE UNIVERSITÏ OP OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE SOME PROBLEMS IN THE ANONYMOUS DRAMA OP THE ELIZABETHAN STAGE A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE PACULTY In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OP PHILOSOPHY BY JOHN l V‘ MURPHY Norman, Oklahoma 1963 SOME PROBLEMS IN THE ANONYMOUS DRAMA OF THE ELIZABETHAN STAGE APPROVED BY DISSERTATION COMMITTEE MAGISTRO ET AMIGO GARISSIMO JOSEPH HANGOGK MARSHBÜRN namque tu solebas meas esse allquid putare nugas 111 I should like above all to acknowledge my many obliga­ tions to Professor Calvin G, Thayer, Department of English, University of Oklahoma, and director of this dissertation. My brother, Donald Murphy, and my mother, Mrs. Leo Murphy, gave help without which I could not have brought this study to a conclusion. Finally, I wish to give special thanks to the following professors for serving as members of my disser­ tation committee: Philip J, Nolan, Chairman, Department of Classics, University of Oklahoma; Alphonse J, Fritz, Department of English, University of Oklahoma; Jack L, Kendall, Department of English, University of Oklahoma, iv TABLE OP CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION................. 1 II. LOCRINE AND SELIMUS: SOMÉT IMPLICATÏÔJJ3 OP THE BORROWINGS PROM SPENSER AND GREENE.......... 7 III. LOCRINE: CONJECTURES AND ÏRPË5ENCES PROM QUARTO TO M A N U S C R I P T ...... 58 IV. SELIMUS: THE TEXT AND THE " l (5S5Le a t m a n u s c r i p t .... 105 V. SELIMUS: CONJECTURES AND INFERENCES PROM QUARTO TO MANUSCRIPT .......... l8l VI. LOCRINE: A RECONSTRUCTED rilSï'ÔRÏ OP LOCRINE: POUL PAPERS TO QUARtO AND ITS CONNECTIONS WITH SELIMUS . 199 Bibliography ........................ 226 V SOME PROBLEMS IN THE ANONYMOUS DRAMA OP THE ELIZABETHAN STAGE CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Scholarly inquiry in the anonymous drama of the; Elizabethan stage has generally centered around either of two interests. In the first instance, quite naturally, such inquiry has been primarily concerned to establish the author. Shakespeare holds pride of place here, as one would expect. The "Shakespeare Apocrypha", plays attributed for one reason or another to Shakespeare, but generally denied a place in ttie canon, not only by Heminges and Condell, but by most later scholars, have nourished the study of the anonymous drama of his age for over three centuries. More recently, the growing interest in the canon of Marlowe, Peele, Greene, Kyd, Webster, Chapman, Mars ton, and their lesser contempo­ raries has broadened and deepened this earlier and more special interest. The second center of interest for research sees in the anonymous drama a number of challenges to scholarly interpretation and conjecture in building up a coherent and comprehensive picture of the drama in the Tudor-Stewart age* 2 To reconstruct the manuscript that lies behind a printed quarto, to clarify some obscure or disputed point of state history, to see more clearly into the import of the organiza­ tion and personnel of the London companies on the drama of the time, to trace out the literary influences on the drama both from dramatic and non-dramatic forms— all these, and many more, have been motives to prolonged research and brilliant interpre­ tation on the part of scholarly giants of our century. Although inquiry has a tendency to center around one or the other of these two interests, any serious investiga­ tion quickly finds itself involved in an inextricable inter­ weaving of the two. Seeking a probable author for a play necessarily involves the fullest possible recreation of its context. But here, we may mark off a clear period in research. The "new bibliography", now more than a half-century old, ushered in a new dispensation in the mapping out of the problems of literary study in this field. Brave men were before Agamemnon: Capell, Malone, Dyce, lÿ-cho Mommsen, P. A. Daniel— these and many others often possessed amazing insight into problems, some of which have not been greatly advanced beyond the point where they were left by the learning and critical ability of these men. Nevertheless, no matter how far one's interests may range, and they should be as catholic as possible, the student of literature must be first and last a student of texts. The scholarly student of literature is, willy-nilly, a bibliographer; he cannot help himself. 3 Herein lies, I venture to think, the peculiar fascination of the drama for the scholar. The drama is the one indisputably great and major form of literature in our culture which is preserved by texts but takes its character­ istic life and vital forms from the living voice of men, not from the written scroll or the printed page. More importantly, it seeks its final realization in these translitérai forms. Thus, its social base, both in its intimate life and in its immediate appeal, has forced its great masters into a simi­ larly intimate and immediate involvement with the form and pressure of their times. And so, although the scholar must take some text as his point of departure, in seeking any fullness of under­ standing of a problem in drama, he may never take the text as his point of rest. But the text and what it may reveal to properly instructed attention is Ariadne's thread. With­ out this thread, even the most alert students will probably remain in the maze forever. The special merit of McKerrow, Pollard, Greg, Chambers, and J, Dover Wilson is that they saw this in all its force and clarity. Everyone now sees that we must seek to determine what kind of a manuscript lies behind our printed quartos and folios and why this manuscript was prepared, if we are to arrive at any conclusions that can command the attention of thoughtful men. But this inquiry may carry the danger of excessive narrowness by the very rigor with which its method has been developed by its exceptionally able practitioners. When this happens, all too often inquiry and certainty seem to dissolve in a wilderness of conjecture, inference, and contradictions which invests all efforts at clarification with a kind of a priori hope­ lessness. To read Kirchbaum on Pollard or Predson Bowers on practically anyone is to feel that bibliography is not so much a vade mecum as a pons asinorum. This present study is primarily a bibliographical inquiry. Insofar as it has a conclusion, this conclusion is a highly tentative reconstruction of the major steps in the history of the text of Locrine, an anonymous drama, which survives in a single quarto edition printed in 1595. In intention and, I hope, by implication, the study has a more far-reaching aim. It seeks to show the need for some synthesis of present knowledge, but a synthesis reflecting an ordered methodology. I see the central dialec­ tic of scholarship as moving fruitfully between certainty and conjecture. Any theory is simply a conjecture comprehen­ sive enough to make all particular certainties coherent euid intelligible. Such a theory should open out at once a number of lines for further research by which its main presuppositions may be tested. In the following chapters, I review previous scholarship on particular matters, for example, the import of borrowings from Spenser on the problems of author and date of composition of Locrine. At once, this involves us 5 in the study of a conç>anlcn drama, also anonymous, Sellmus» I offer evidence from my own study to supplement the evidence collected by other scholars, but, my main endeavor is to suggest, finally, the futility of seeking any further certainty in these matters except in a larger context of textual and literary historical theory. I suggest that we have a vast range of such knowledge, but that we lack equally comprehen­ sive theories with which to order our knowledge. This study, of course, does not offer such theories; it does seek to underline the necessity of creating these larger theoretical frames of reference if we are to make systematic progress in our studies# This line of thought especially suggests itself when we turn to a close study of the texts in an effort to establish the history of the manuscript that forms the printer's copy* I think our texts offer pointers to probable truth, but we find ourselves stopped short by the absence of bold and com­ prehensive thought concerning the general nature of abridged texts, reported texts, stolen texts, or even, "continuous copy". In the nature of things, the modest limits of this investigation force us to inconclusive results. Evidence is offered that would seem to establish strong grounds for linking Robert Greene with crucial stages in the history of these two dramas, Locrine and Selimus. Yet, the absence of broad critical surveys of such features as the relationship of rhetorical figures to the chronology of drama leavesus 6 foi* the most part with little more than impressionistic judg­ ments and conclusions. I wish to make it clear that none of the major problems raised in this study are taken to any stage of exhaustive inquiry. Any such inquiry would, of course, be a separate dissertation. I conceive this work to be a preliminary exercise clearing the ground for a larger work on some general problems of study in the drama from the founding of the Theater to the death of Queen Elizabeth. CHAPTER II LOCRINE AND SELIMUS; SOME IMPLICATIONS OP THE BORROWINGS PROM SPENSER AND GREENE The past decade has seen several extended studies of Locrine; Baldwin Maxwell In his Studies In the Shakespeare Apocrypha, Irving Rlbner In his The English History Play In the Age of Shakespeare, and most recently, an extended dis­ cussion of date and authorship In T.